The dampness at the southwestern border town of Lanjiang was heavy enough to wring out water. The sticky heat of July clung to the skin, inescapable. Leaves on the old banyan trees drooped limply by the roadside, listless. Occasionally, a car would rumble past, churning up a wave of hot, dusty air.
Inside the "Tranquility Listening Psychological Counseling" center in the downtown commercial district, the air conditioning ran fiercely, carrying a cold hint of lingering disinfectant. It created a stark contrast to the humid heat outside. The glass door jingled lethargically as it opened, as if burdened by the effort.
From the narrow window of the second-floor lounge, Lin Ruoxi looked down just in time to see that familiar patrol car, its roof paint somewhat dulled, turning awkwardly at the street corner. It splashed through waterlogged potholes as it headed towards the jumbled old residential neighborhood east of the city, where the new mingled awkwardly with the old. She withdrew her gaze, fingertips brushing the meticulously embroidered vine and lotus tracery hidden along the cuffs of her teal-colored, modernized cheongsam. The fabric felt cool and silky against her skin. A simple antique silver bracelet hung loosely around her slender left wrist, making the bone beneath appear even more delicate.
"Teacher Xiao Xi! Whatcha lookin' at?" Xiao Zhang's voice, crisp and clear, floated up from the downstairs reception. She was a girl fresh out of nursing school, cheeks still rounded with baby fat, clutching a thermos as she poked her head up. "That poker-faced cop was just here again, eh? Left in a right hurry! Called you, but you didn't hear him."
Poker-faced cop? The corner of Lin Ruoxi's mouth curved almost imperceptibly upwards. Ling Yuming's sharply defined face, always radiating an aura of impenetrable sternness, combined with his sun- and wind-darkened skin… "Poker-faced" was an unexpectedly fitting description.
She didn't take Xiao Zhang's bait. Instead, she turned and sank back into the single armchair by the window. The chair was soft, enveloping her as if it could shut out many things. On the matte white coffee table before her lay the latest issue of Criminal Psychology Research, a plain ballpoint pen resting beside it.
From downstairs drifted Xiao Zhang's drawn-out sigh, mingled with the faint electronic hum of the reception computer, both worming their way into her ears.
"Sigh… Nothin' good happenin' east o' town again," Xiao Zhang's tone carried the distinct local blend of neighborly concern and barely restrained gossip. "Heard Lao Huai Jing Alley over there… a whole family… somethin' awful! Jeez, poor things… happened just this mornin'! Auntie Wang at the street corner says that kid inside… oh, poor little thing, it's just tragic!" Her voice dropped lower, growing more mysterious. "Even creepier is what they're sayin'… that dang ghost nursery rhyme again! The 'Tug Tug, Pull Pull' one! All spooky like, reckon they bumped into somethin' unclean?"
Lin Ruoxi's gaze fell on the deep, swirling geometric pattern on the journal's cover. Her index finger traced its edges aimlessly, hovering just above the surface. Xiao Zhang's fragmented commentary downstairs about the "poor little things" and "unclean things" failed to stir even a ripple in the stillness of her eyes.
"Nursery rhyme…" She murmured the two words as if to herself, her voice light as a feather settling on dust. Her fingertip unconsciously scratched the table's smooth surface, leaving behind faint, almost invisible water trails – hidden trajectories that froze instantly before she casually wiped them away.
She raised a nearby glass, took a small sip of lukewarm water, and looked out the window. Lead-gray clouds hung low over Lanjiang City's uneven rooftops, like a massive, grimy rag. A thread of irritation began to prickle – not from Xiao Zhang's chatter downstairs or the so-called "spooky nursery rhyme." This sticky, oppressive weather was the real source, weighing down every breath she took.
East of the city, Lao Huai Jing Alley.
Time seemed to have frozen in this tucked-away corner of Lanjiang City twenty years ago. Red brick walls were stained dark and glossy by grime and steam, cracked cement paths slick with moss. Crudely built tin shacks and plastic lean-tos, like parasitic vines, twisted around several dilapidated slab apartment buildings that looked on the verge of collapse. The air carried the perpetual odor of mildew mixed with cheap cooking oil and the sour stench of rotting garbage.
"Crime scene! Mind your feet! And don't go stomping around like damn fools!" Police Captain Ling Yuming bellowed, his voice cutting through the buzzing chatter outside the hastily erected police tape. The back of his old, dark blue duty uniform was already soaked with sweat, plastered to his solid frame. The stubble sprouting on his chin and his deeply furrowed brow made his already angular face look even more stern, like a rock polished smooth by relentless elements.
The scene was inside the west unit on the top floor of Slab Building Number Three. The shabby wooden door hung wide open, releasing a strange smell – sickly-sweet mixed with dust and stale air. Amplified by the stifling July heat, the odor thickened, becoming almost suffocating.
The new forensic assistant barely stuck his head in before a choked, suppressed gag erupted from his throat.
Ling Yuming ignored him. He tugged on shoe covers and gloves, bent low, and squeezed inside. The cramped living room was almost entirely visible in a single glance, yet the sight that met his eyes was enough to freeze the blood instantly.
A family of three. Or rather, three corpses in grotesque postures.
The wife lay supine near a faded plastic coffee table, eyes wide open as if petrified with sheer terror, mouth gaping unnaturally wide. Not far away, a small boy was curled up in the oil-stained corner of a cloth sofa, his tiny body twisted as if folded by some invisible force.
But the thing that sent shivers down the spine was the position of the husband. He sat in a rickety old rattan chair facing the doorway, his upper body folded backwards in an unnatural contortion. His head lolled at a bizarre angle, deeply sunken below the chair back, his neck bent nearly ninety degrees. That face, grotesquely purplish and contorted from suffocation, seemed to "stare" blankly up at the mottled, cracked ceiling where water stains snaked.
The cause of death was clear for him – a deep, bone-reaching slash across the neck, swift and decisive. The forensic team's flashlight beams swept over the floor beneath the rattan chair, revealing a large spatter pattern of dried, dark-brown blood, flecked onto the cracked cement in a stark, fan-like shape.
Despite this, the room was unusually "clean." The windows were the old latch-up kind, secured tightly from the inside; thick dust lined the inner wooden frames. The sole entrance door had been locked from within with a simple bolt lock – something confirmed by the neighbors who called it in and the local officers who broke down the door. The sliding bolt mechanism showed no signs of being forced or picked.
A sealed room. Utterly sealed.
The room was small, cramped, and messy, filled with second-hand furniture and piled junk, leaving hardly any room to stand. Forensic technicians moved carefully, operating their equipment. Camera flashes exploded intermittently. One struggled to move a heavy, old five-drawer cabinet, revealing a tangled gray mass beneath, like fabric fibers.
"Captain Ling!" A bespectacled technician, Xiao Xu, crouched near the corner of the sofa. With tweezers, he carefully shifted a few plastic building blocks lying beside the boy's twisted body, revealing a small, coldly gleaming object hidden underneath. "Take a look at this!"
Ling Yuming immediately stepped over. It was a piece of metal, barely the size of a fingernail, with sharp edges and a peculiar shape.
"Looks like… some kind of specially made silver leaf?" Xiao Xu raised it carefully with the tweezers to the light. A cold gleam slid along its razor-sharp edge.
"Preliminary assessment is that it's a fragment broken off from the edge of a sharp implement," said Chief Technician Lao Liang, leaning closer, his voice precise as ever. "We'll do material and toolmark analysis back at the lab."
Another technician crawled out from under a narrow single bed in the bedroom, face pale, holding a hard-bound plastic notebook: "Captain Ling, found it wedged under the mattress." He paused, his voice tightening almost imperceptibly. "It's the little boy's 'drawing book'… flipped to the end…"
On the yellowed paper were vast, unsettling swathes of red crayon – clumsy, yet pressed down with unnatural force. A few crooked black lines outlined vaguely human shapes. Where the head should have been, one shape had been smeared into an irregular oval dripping with thick, red clots.
Flipping to the final page, the image became unnervingly "clean." At the bottom of the page, written in a childish yet stubbornly forceful scrawl, was a line of words:
Tug tug, pull pull, the moon is gone,
The puppet's eyeballs, turn and turn, fall down.
Beneath the words, small indentations dotted the page as if someone had pressed a pencil tip – failed attempts at rudimentary sketches.
"Nursery rhyme…" Ling Yuming muttered the words, his voice low and icy. An unseen draft seemed to stir in the cramped space, making the back of every officer's neck prickle.
Xiao Zhang's fragmented murmurs downstairs suddenly crystallized into this single, terrifying line of childish yet vicious writing. Ling Yuming's gaze swept the room like a hawk's – the narrow window frame, the clutter-strewn floor, the battered furniture, the peeling paint on the ceiling… scrutinizing every detail that might conceal an exit. But all the evidence pointed inexorably to one conclusion: the door locked, the windows secured.
This goddamned locked room!
Officers continued their meticulous, painstaking investigation in the oppressive silence. Suddenly, Technician Xiao Xu made another discovery near the doorway, on the side of the filthy, decrepit refrigerator covered in years of grime and cheap plastic decals.
"Captain Ling!" Xiao Xu's voice was a suppressed gasp.
Wedged into a barely noticeable crevice where the refrigerator door met the frame was a tiny, crudely carved wooden puppet head. It seemed hewn from much older material, barely larger than a little finger, with two black dots for eyes painted on – no nose or mouth. A length of almost invisible, thin nylon monofilament was tied to the base of the head, trailing deep into the pile of junk crammed behind the fridge.
When Xiao Xu held his breath and nudged the taut monofilament ever so gently with the tip of his tweezers—
Creak…
In the center of the living room, the one newer-looking item – a cheap, cartoon penguin wall clock – suddenly emitted an unnerving mechanical sound: the hard click of a rewinding spring.
Then, Snap!… Snap!… Snap!…
The plastic penguin figurine atop the clock jerked abruptly backwards. Then, a small, round object, slightly larger than a walnut, rolled out of the gaping cavity that had opened like a vomiting mouth in the penguin's throat.
Thump. It landed heavily on the mottled cement floor beneath, bounced twice, and came to rest not far from Ling Yuming's feet.
Instant, suffocating silence fell. All eyes locked onto the object—a perfectly smooth sphere crafted from brass and hardwood. Its surface was intricately carved with a precise geometric lacework, forming an impossibly complex structure. It lay there, radiating a chilling, eerie beauty. Under the dim light, the complex interplay of minuscule internal springs and gears within the perforated pattern was faintly visible.
Like an artifact from the realm of hell.
"A puzzle ball?!" Chief Technician Lao Liang hissed, his voice thick with shock and disbelief. He lunged forward.
Ling Yuming reacted faster. A large hand shot out, gripping Lao Liang's arm like an iron band. Ling Yuming's face, usually set like stone, twitched almost imperceptibly. His gaze remained fixed on the cold sphere, piercing eyes trying to bore straight through it.
"Freeze!" Ling Yuming's voice was dangerously low, each word pressed from the depths of his chest, carrying absolute command. "Everyone! One step back!"
His eyes didn't leave the puzzle ball. He didn't even look at the grotesque puppet head jammed in the fridge crack. Instead, he wheeled around sharply. His piercing gaze, like a searchlight, raked across the edge of the small, cluttered dining table crammed into a corner, piled high with junk and old newspapers.
Something over there was gone. Something that had been partially lying inside a crumpled canvas shopping bag just moments before.
"That!" Ling Yuming pointed at the newly empty spot on the table corner, his voice colder than frost. "That record!"
Only seconds ago, Officer Li in charge of scene photography had clearly noted the corner of a hard cardboard sleeve poking out of the open mouth of the canvas bag—a dark red background with blurred, flower-patterned designs, the title illegible.
But now, it was gone. The spot was vacant. Only the canvas bag gaped open like an empty maw.
As if an invisible ghostly hand had snatched the crucial item away from under their very noses.
A chill, deeper and stickier than any air conditioning, crawled up Ling Yuming's spine. Locked room! Mechanisms! Nursery rhyme! Missing record! All the fragments collided violently inside his mind, yet no clear line emerged to string them together logically. This cramped, squalid space had become a meticulously laid, taunting maze.
Just then, his phone buzzed insistently in his trouser pocket.
Ling Yuming pulled it out, his face tense. The screen displayed the number of Xiao Li from the precinct support unit. "Speak!" he answered, his voice still edged with agitation and stress.
"Captain Ling!" Xiao Li sounded urgent. "Just got feedback from Dispatch Command—your request on nearby public surveillance footage." He spoke quickly. "We've got feeds from six cameras near the alley intersections around Building Three during the hour surrounding the incident timeframe. Cross-referencing suspect people and vehicles, nothing super obvious yet… wait…" He paused, keyboard keys clattering rapidly as he scanned something. "Huh? This one point is a bit… weird."
"Spit it out!" Ling Yuming snapped impatiently.
"It's… right around fifteen minutes after the incident time," Xiao Li replied, his tone hesitant. "Footage from the intersection of Lao Huai Jing Alley and the main road… picked up that… you know… the psychologist, Teacher Lin from 'Tranquility Listening'." He paused, choosing words carefully. "Caught her just turning out from the alley corner, carrying one of those reusable woven shopping bags, walking… not too fast, not too slow… heading in the direction of the Central Hospital."
Ling Yuming's brow knotted instantly. His hand tightened around the phone.
"Tranquility Listening Psychological Counseling"? Lin Ruoxi?
His mind flashed back to half an hour ago, standing downstairs at the center with its gleaming windows and bone-chilling AC. He'd glanced up and caught a fleeting glimpse in a second-floor window. An indistinct silhouette, faint, blurry like behind frosted glass, vanishing quickly.
Her.
"You confirm it was after the incident?" Ling Yuming pressed, his voice dropping lower, carrying an unconscious intensity. "Precise time?"
"Screenshot timestamp shows 9:37:03 AM. The crime call came in at 9:21 AM. We broke down the door and entered at 9:25 AM." Xiao Li's voice was emphatically certain. "Just sixteen or seventeen minutes apart, and she pops up at the street entrance closest to the scene."
9:37 AM. Roughly twelve minutes after they breached the door into the blood-drenched scene.
"Tranquility Listening" was located in the heart of the old city district. Getting to Lao Huai Jing Alley took at least ten minutes by car, minimum. A delicate, refined psychologist, alone, just over fifteen minutes after a brutal murder, carrying a shopping bag and strolling casually down a street barely a stone's throw from the scene reeking of death?
The logic strained in Ling Yuming's mind like an overloaded metal ring groaning under tension. Was it coincidence? An absurd thought slithered into his consciousness: Had she left that counseling center early, yet managed to linger at the edge of this death-drenched place first?
Too close. The timing and location… it was all too damn coincidental!
Ling Yuming's jaw clenched. He cut the call, jammed the phone back into his pocket with a muffled thud. He cast a sweeping, furious look around the room – the three grotesquely still bodies, the nightmarish nursery rhyme drawing paper on the floor, the puppet head in the fridge crack trailing its transparent thread, the chillingly inert yet malevolent puzzle ball by his foot…
Finally, his eyes locked onto the newly vacant spot on the corner table. The vanished record hung like a huge, mocking black question mark.
Ling Yuming raised his head, his gaze seeming to pierce through the thick ceiling slabs and the murky air, towards the city center.
"Teacher Lin…" The title rolled silently over his teeth. A cold, hawk-like scrutiny and bottomless suspicion flashed through his dark brows.
In the corner, Technician Xiao Xu, holding his breath, finally steeled himself to reach out once more with his tweezers towards the transparent nylon monofilament.
Almost at the exact same moment—
Click.
Back in the dead center of the living room, that cheap, cartoon penguin wall clock—now hollow—where the throat cavity had been, gave another slight, almost imperceptible shudder. The thin metal plate hanging beneath the clock pendulum jerked violently upwards, yanked by some unseen force!